1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to developing an expected winning probability distribution in response to a customer request for a price quote. More specifically, only the seller's internal historical win/loss bid data is used as a prediction of competitors' pricing and for development of the expected winning probability distribution.
2. Description of the Related Art
A business-to-business (b2b) direct selling process begins with a customer's request for price quote for the products specified in a high level description. Then, it is the responsibility of a sales representative or pricing agent to come up with a reasonable price range that can be offered. If the price quote is too high, then a high profit will be expected, but the probability that the bid is materialized is very low.
If the price quote is too low, then there is an expected high probability of obtaining this bid, but the profit level would be very low. For this reason, sales representatives must be equipped with a smart pricing decision support tool, which can provide useful information such as expected winning probability level and expected revenue (or profit) for each price quote.
In the conventional model, a knowledge of the competitors' win/loss distribution is required, either by obtaining actual data about the competitor or by making assumptions. Although assumptions of competitors' behavior make price modeling easier, models developed from these assumptions inherently lack the realism of models based on actual data. What is missing in the conventional methods is a method that relies only on information readily available to a seller.